The Foreigner Part 13

And here is another man. What's wrong with him?"

Beyond Rosenblatt lay a black-bearded man upon his face, breathing heavily. The doctor turned him over.

"He's alive anyway, and," after examination, "I can't find any wound. Heart all right, nothing wrong with him, I guess, except that he's got a bad jag on."

A cursory examination of the crowd revealed wounds in plenty, but nothing serious enough to demand the doctor's attention.

"Now then," said the Sergeant briskly, "I want to get your names and addresses. You can let me have them?" he continued, turning to Jacob.

"Me not know all mens."

"Go on," said the Sergeant curtly.

"Dis man Rosenblatt. Dis man Polak, Kravicz. Not know where he live."

"It would be difficult, I am thinking, for any one to tell where he lives now," said the Sergeant grimly, "and it does not much matter for my purpose."

"Poor chap," said the doctor, "it's too bad."

"What?" said the Sergeant, glancing at him, "well, it is too bad, that is true. But they are a bad lot, these Galicians."

"Poor chap," continued the doctor, looking down upon him, "perhaps he has got a wife and children."

A murmur rose among the men.

"No, he got no wife," said Jacob.

"Thank goodness for that!" said the doctor. "These fellows are a bit rough," he continued, "but they have never had a chance, nor even half a chance. A beastly tyrannical government at home has put the fear of death on them for this world, and an ignorant and superst.i.tious Church has kept them in fear of purgatory and h.e.l.l fire for the next. They have never had a chance in their own land, and so far, they have got no better chance here, except that they do not live in the fear of Siberia." The doctor had his own views upon the foreign peoples in the West.

"That is all right, Doctor," said the Sergeant, despite the Calvinism of generations beating in his heart, "it is hard on them, but there is n.o.body compelling them here to drink and fight like a lot of brutes."

"But who is to teach them any better?" said the doctor.

"Come on," said the Sergeant, "who is this?" pointing to the dark-bearded man lying in the corner.

"Dis man," said Jacob, "strange man."

"Any of you know him here?" asked the Sergeant.

There was a murmur of voices.

"What do they say?"

"No one know him. He drink much beer. He very drunk. He play cards wit' Rosenblatt," said Jacob.

"Playing cards, eh? I think we will be finding something now.

Who else was in the card game?"

Again a murmur of voices arose.

"Dis Polak man," said Jacob, "and Rosenblatt, and dat man dere, and--"

Half a dozen voices rose in explanation, and half a dozen hands eagerly pointed out the big Dalmatian, who stood back among the crowd pale with terror.

"Come up here, you," said the Sergeant to him.

Instead of responding, with one bound the Dalmatian was at the door, and hurled the two men aside as if they were wooden pegs. But before he could tear open the door, the Sergeant was on him. At once the Dalmatian grappled with him in a fierce struggle. There was a quick angry growl from the crowd. They all felt themselves to be in an awkward position. Once out of the room, it would be difficult for any police officer to a.s.sociate them in any way with the crime.

The odds were forty to one. Why not make a break for liberty?

A rush was made for the struggling pair at the door.

"Get back there!" roared the Sergeant, swinging his baton and holding off his man with the other hand.

At the same instant the doctor, springing up from his patient, and taking in the situation, put down his head and bored through the crowd in the manner which at one time had been the admiration and envy of his fellow-students in Manitoba College, till he found himself side by side with the Sergeant.

"Well done!" cried the Sergeant in cheerful approval, "you are the lad!

We will just be teaching these chaps a fery good lesson, whateffer,"

continued the Sergeant, lapsing in his excitement into his native dialect.

"Here you," he cried to the big Dalmatian who was struggling and kicking in a frenzy of fear and rage, "will you not keep quiet? Take that then."

And he laid no gentle tap with his baton across the head of his captive.

The Dalmatian staggered to the wall and collapsed. There was a flash of steel and a click, and he lay handcuffed and senseless at the Sergeant's side.

"I hate to do that," said the Sergeant apologetically, "but on this occasion it cannot be helped. That was a good one, Doctor," he continued, as the doctor planted his left upon an opposing Galician chin, thereby causing a sudden subsidence of its owner. "These men have not got used to us yet, and we will just have to be patient with them," said the Sergeant, laying about with his baton as opportunity offered, not in any slas.h.i.+ng wholesale manner, but making selection, and delivering his blows with the eye and hand of an artist. He was handling the situation gently and with discretion.

Still the crowd kept pressing hard upon the two men at the door.

"We must put a stop to this," said the Sergeant seriously.

"Here you!" he called to Jacob above the uproar.

Jacob pushed nearer to him.

"Tell these fellows that I am not wanting to hurt any of them, but if they do not get quiet soon, I will attack them and will not spare them, and that if they quit their fighting, none of them will be hurt except the guilty party."

At once Jacob sprang upon a beer keg and waving his arms wildly, he secured a partial silence, and translated for them the Sergeant's words.

"And tell them, too," said the doctor in a high, clear voice, "there is a man dying over there that I have got to attend to right now, and I haven't time for this foolishness."

As he spoke, he once more bored his way through the crowd to the side of Rosenblatt, who was continuing to gasp painfully and spit blood. The moment of danger was past. The excited crowd settled down again into an appearance of stupid anxiety, awaiting they knew not what.

"Now then," said the Sergeant, turning to the Dalmatian who had recovered consciousness and was standing sullen and pa.s.sive. He had made his attempt for liberty, he had failed, and now he was ready to accept his fate. "Ask him what is his name," said the Sergeant.

"He say his name John Jarema."

"And what has he got to say for himself?"

At this the Dalmatian began to speak with eager gesticulation.

"What is he saying?" enquired the Sergeant.

"Dis man say he no hurt no man. Dis man," pointing to the dead Polak, "play cards, fight, stab knife into his arm," said Jacob, pulling up the Dalmatian's coat sleeve to show an ugly gash in the forearm. "Jarema hit him on head, shake him bad, and trow him in corner on noder man."